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Movie Version of Book on Bomb Introduced

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THE second New York Film Festival scored something of a triumph last night with the showing of a major American picture that is on the threshold of theatrical release. It was Columbia's "Fail Safe," a suspense drama based on the menace of the nuclear bomb, and permission to show it in the program of international cinema at Philharmonic Hall was in the nature of a top-level acknowledgment of the festival's importance by the American film industry.The only previous comparable concession was that made by Paramount for the showing of "All the Way Home" at the festival last year. But even that was not quite as significant as a commendation of the "festival idea" as the showing last night.For "Fail Safe" is definitely in the area of those films that are important and are going to be talked about. And it packs a melodramatic wallop that will rattle a lot of chattering teeth.As its title tells, it is based on the popular novel of Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, and it covers almost precisely the same ground, in a general way, as does "Dr. Strangelove," or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."That is to say, it is a story of what might happen in the secret chambers of our highest government and military personnel if a flight of American bombers should accidentally be directed to fly over the Soviet Union and drop nuclear bombs.In this case, a piece of mechanism in the Omaha headquarters of the Strategic Air Command gets fouled up and transmits a critical code message to a flight of loaded bombers over Alaska to bomb Moscow. That's the kick-off for the drama, and the rest of the picture has to do with the desperate and determined efforts of the generals in Omaha and the President in the White House and what appears to be the National Security Council in the Pentagon to get the bombers to turn back and, that failing, to warn the Russians and help them shoot the bombers down.This is, of course, a reckless supposition, actually in the science-fiction realm, which uses a classic theme for melodrama — man menaced with destruction by his own machines. And the pictorial presentation of it, with the cameras jumping about from the SAC nerve center to the White House—where the President is glued to the "hot line"—and to the Pentagon, with the movement of the bombers indicated on a huge electronic plotting map, is completely in the format of the realistic science-fiction film.But the topical significance of it endows it with a special urgency, and Sidney Lumet has directed it in a fast-paced, nervous fashion that gives it momentum and suspense. It is played well, too, by all the actors (actresses have only minor roles), especially by Henry Fonda as the President, Frank Overton as the top SAC general and Fritz Weaver as an Omaha colonel who goes berserk in the clutch.In its favor, too, is the fact that, unlike "Strangelove," it does not make its characters out to be maniacs and monsters and morons. It makes them out to be intelligent men trying to use their wits and their techniques to correct an error that has occurred through overreliance on the efficiency of machines. I would not say that the solution of the dilemma seems to me a sensible or likely one, but it is, at least, a valid shocker that induces the viewer to think."Fail Safe" will open in a group of neighborhood theaters in this area on Oct 7.